WSDOT employee under investigation for overtime fraud

The State Patrol is investigating an employee with the state Department of Transportation after a payroll audit showed $67,000 in unearned overtime and compensation during the past two years.

WSDOT referred the case in the last month to State Patrol investigators and the Pierce County Prosecutor’s Office for potential theft charges while the agency continues an internal audit.

The discrepancy was discovered during a routine review of overtime-accrual reports. The employee acknowledged during an internal review that she manipulated the payroll system to bill hours that she never worked. The employee, an administrative assistant with payroll duties and 4 years of service, resigned while facing termination, according to WSDOT. She worked in a Pierce County office.

“We work hard to be highly accountable in our use of taxpayers’ dollars. We are disappointed in our employee’s actions and have taken steps to ensure this kind of abuse won’t happen again,” said Steve Reinmuth, WSDOT’s chief of staff, in a prepared statement.

State Patrol spokesman Bob Calkins said detectives had done a “preliminary review” of the case, but were not very far into it.

WSDOT has been able to document $67,000 in unearned overtime, but the amount could go higher during the criminal investigation, WSDOT spokesman Lloyd Brown said.

The state Auditor’s office dinged WSDOT in an annual fiscal audit in March for concerns over unauthorized access to the agency’s Labor Distribution System. State auditors found that 71 employees with no time-keeping responsibilities had access to the system, according to WSDOT.

Most were employees who had been promoted to new jobs or left the agency and whose access was never removed, Brown said.

In response, WSDOT implemented new procedures for regularly reviewing who accesses the system. In addition, the agency is updating the system so that no one can adjust their own payroll records in the system, according to WSDOT. The agency had a policy against such practices, but it had exceptions for employees working in remote offices, where no one was available to enter the data for them, Brown said.